Trends in the Data: Changes in the level of trust in social and political institutions in Armenia

According to an earlier CRRC blog post, which looked at the changes in the level of trust in social and political institutions in Georgia from 2011 to 2015, trust in a fair number of institutions in Georgia declined. This post provides a comparable review of the situation in Armenia, using CRRC’s Caucasus Barometer (CB) survey data. The level of trust in most political institutions CB asked about has declined in Armenia since 2011. The largest decline can be observed in respect to the President. Trust dropped from 36% in 2011 to 16% in 2015. Trust in executive government and parliament also declined between 2011 and 2013, and has stabilized since at a rather low level.

Note: The charts in this blog post only show the share of those who report trusting the respective institution. Answer options “Fully trust” and “Rather trust” were combined. The survey results also show a slight decline in trust in courts between 2011 and 2015. Trust in the police, educational system and healthcare system remained largely unchanged, while trust in the army increased.

In sum, of the institutions CB asked about, the largest drop in the level of trust is observed was in the President, while trust in the army increased in Armenia. The levels of trust in executive government, parliament, and courts in Armenia have slightly declined since 2011, while the levels of trust in the healthcare system, police and educational system have not changed. To learn more about trust in institutions in the South Caucasus, take a look at the data using our Online Data Analysis tool.

As discussed in the first part of this blog post, the results of CRRC-Georgia’s survey conducted for the Georgian Civil Society Sustainability Initiative (CSSIGE) project in fall 2017 confirmed that both knowledge about NGOs and trust toward them is quite low in Georgia. This blog post looks at the inconsistency between low trust toward NGOs, on the one hand, and quite positive assessments of their activities, on the other hand.